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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

If so, your card is not supported in 9.4. They dropped support for some older cards in order to "focus on newer ones". They also dropped support for OSes past February 2009, that is, they do not support .29 kernels or Windows 7 in 9.3. This effectively leaves you without the ATI driver.

You need to use arguments with the script to specify your system to the installer

something like "sudo ./ati-driver-installer-9-3-x86.x86_64.run --listpkg" will give a list and then you tell the installer what your system is with for example "sudo ./ati-driver-installer-9-3-x86.x86_64.run --buildandinstallpkg Ubuntu/jaunty".

and now it broke things but at least I can get into the desktop.
glxinfo says
name of display: :0.0
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Segmentation fault

I ended up having to go back to Ubuntu 8.04 (Heron). It turns out that the Catalyst 9.3 and earlier drivers are not compatible with the new v1.6 release of xorg-xserver used by Jaunty, and my ATI graphics card is no longer supported by the Linux Catalyst drivers as of release 9.4. This means that I will never be able to use my ATI X800 card with Jaunty unless someone patches Catalyst 9.3 to use the new xorg-xserver. It was either buy a newer card (this time nVidia) or back down to Heron (which I did and everything is now working fine with the restricted ATI drivers).

No, it means that you will get much the same functionality you got with the fglrx (Catalyst) drivers by simply using the free software radeon driver instead. It fully supports your card in 2D and 3D, excepting a few things still to be done like GLSL write combiner support.

I have an ATI Radeon x850 PRO AGP card, one of the ones with support removed by ATI in their fglrx Catalyst drivers. Most 3D functions, like compiz, openGL 3D games, etc, work just fine with the standard radeon driver.

FGLRX IS better with 3D still, as it includes functions that get VMWare Workstation to use Direct3D in Windows guests and fully utilizes the GoogleEarth stuff. That's why my Debian Lenny system has the fglrx installed. Debian Lenny has the Catalyst 8.12 fglrx driver in the repos and the 2.6.26 kernel so it all works fine. But in another couple of months when I do an upgrade to Squeeze (testing) I'll be removing them and returning to the radeon driver.

I'm just waiting for the newer kernels, xorg, and KDE4 versions to get into Squeeze first before dist-upgrading. Smartly, Debian is waiting for upstream to get their acts fully together before tackling the packages themselves. Some stuff is there in Sid, some even migrated to testing already, but really not stable enough for me as of yet. Folks are using Squeeze but I think another couple of months will bring more stable Release Candidate ready types of things and so I'm waiting.

The point is you don't need the restricted driver for most 3D stuff to work just fine with ATI. With NVidia you do, since they don't have 3D support in their free nv driver, but ATI released the source so that the free radeon driver is now pretty darned good with our cards in 3D.

You need to use arguments with the script to specify your system to the installer

something like "sudo ./ati-driver-installer-9-3-x86.x86_64.run --listpkg" will give a list and then you tell the installer what your system is with for example "sudo ./ati-driver-installer-9-3-x86.x86_64.run --buildandinstallpkg Ubuntu/jaunty".

Just try any argument, the script will tell you what is possible.

Df

Can this method be done on Slackware 13 ( 64 bit edition ) ?
I got an ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 card on my labtop that I am to install Slackware on this weekend. And I am thinking that I want to use the labtop to the max.

I know that I have been told that the Open Source ATI drivers are better thene the Official ones. But in this case, I want to get the machine to do the same things that I can when I run XP on it.